Robert Scobie, a retired special education teacher who lives in Hanover, N.H., accompanied Don May on a two-week visit to Salikenni during February/March 2008. This was the third in a series of visits by American teachers to the village, aimed at opening a dialogue with Salikenni teachers on education methods.


By Robert Scobie

I had three objectives for my first trip to Salikenni last February and March. Most important was to get to know the village, its school and staff, and to discover how I might be helpful. Second, to help the staff, where they perceived the need, to implement the new Gambian phonics program introduced at the beginning of the school year. Finally, to provide resources requested by the English teacher of grade 7-9 for teaching English grammar.

I had never been to Africa before and found myself having to deal with fears of an unknown culture. How would I feel about sticking out as one of a handful of white people? Would I be accepted or challenged? Though English is the national language of The Gambia, I knew nothing of the indigenous language, Mandinka. How would I communicate with the native peoples? Though I was well briefed by the program's administrator and other Americans who had traveled there, nothing can compare with actually experiencing the environment, its culture and its people. As it turned out, the administrator, a much respected person in Salikenni, paved the way into the culture of the villlage. These Muslim people did the rest. They are warm and friendly. One is often greeted with a handshake, heartfelt inquiries about one''s family and how things are going.

Two other things struck me during my first visit to Salikenni village and its Basic Cycle School: its obvious poverty and an eagerness to learn by both school staff and students.

Extended families live in compounds enclosed by fences of rusting corruged metal with houses built of mud bricks or cement blocks with sloping roofs of corrugate. Their main cash crop of groundnuts, in addition to rice, is sufficient for only part of the year, constrained by the smallness of their plots of land, an inability to afford fertilizer and lack of modern machinery. The demands of farmwork are unremitting, requiring often a whole family effort. Indebtedness grows annually, and when the next harvest comes around, a lot of money goes to pay past debts. Families have few possessions; children have no toys or books.

Education is believed by many people in Salikenni to be the way out of poverty. The Gambia, as a nation, has set its goal to provide a ""basic"" education (grades 1-9) for every child by 2015. For this purpose, with the support of several international organizations, its education department last year developed a manual for teachers based on a phonics approach for grade 1-3 to learn to read English, the national official language. The Salikenni Basic Cycle School began to implement this approach in September, 2007. While staff eagerness to learn the system is evident, their training is limited and the implementation of the approach uneven. This is where the Scholarship program can be very helpful.

As stated above, one of my expectations was to provide assistance with regard to program implementation where the staff perceived the need. Waiting until students finish 6th grade to begin special tutoring sessions in English is too late. The program felt, along with the staff, that the children needed more systematic learning of the English language from the first grade on in order to be ready for the 9th grade standardized test required of all Gambian students to continue their formal education.

On my first trip to Salikenni, I observed the teaching in grades 1-3 classrooms and in the special tutoring classes involving 7th and 8th graders and 9th graders. In addition to the classroom observations, feedback sessions were held with teachers; one awareness-building workshop was conducted, and a follow-up meeting was held on the workshop topics. The third grade teacher, Almami Touray, allowed me to share teaching in his classroom. The lesson focused on constructing words using word families and initial consonants. I had brought with me many instructional resources including magnetized letters and letter combinations along with white magnetic boards. Using relevant magnets, I modeled the use of the white boards and demonstrated how to engage students actively in forming words, something they were unaccustomed to. It was exciting for both Almami and me to observe the energy and excitement of the children in this activity. For the upper level students, I provided resource material on English grammar in the form of text and exercise sheets  to be used when relevant to the lesson. These included multiple copies of exercise sheets for the students, designed to reduce blackboard writing and copying and provide more time for teacher-student interaction.

I think the conditions are ripe for improvement in Salikenni: the staff and students are eager, The Gambia has set for itself a lofty goal, and the community sees education as the path for improvement. But, they need more assistance.